Down to business
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I wasn’t all that impressed with the standard of phones from Nokia. Even with a market share worldwide approaching 40%, I suppose everyone goes through ups and downs. Luckily for cellphone users, that bad patch is well and truly over – and the E51 bears testament to this.
It’s the successor to the E50, Nokia’s entry-level business phone, although “entry level” really isn’t accurate. The E50 and E51 are both what the industry likes to call candy bar form factor phones. For ordinary people that means they look like a normal cellphone with no extended keyboards, no sliders, no flip open mechanisms and, in this case, no crazy gimmicks aimed at catching the eye of 15-year-old fashion freaks.
That isn’t to say the E51 is an ugly phone: with its slim design and silver metal back and edging it looks rather fetching. The screen is clear and bright and there’s a 2 megapixel camera at the back of the cellphone to take those necessary snaps.
I was very impressed by the feel of the keys, which are a decent size and depress with just the right amount of firmness under your finger. There are a total of seven programmable shortcut keys, including the five on the navigation button and four non-programmable shortcuts. The four non-programmable buttons are for email, contacts, calendar and the main menu, showing the business focus of the device. The power button and the volume controls on the side of the E51 are too rubbery and hard to press for my liking and maybe Nokia could fix that in its E52.
I have many friends and family members who complain about all the features on new cellphones, and while the E51 isn’t short on features, I’d be happy to recommend it to them. That’s based on the fact that it does the basics very well, hasn’t been designed with yuppies as its primary market and has those extra features when you need them.
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